World Magazine 2024
Many students enter college or university with a passion to acquire knowledge or to get a degree; a doorway into their career. Nonetheless, they are required to learn certain skills to excel in their subjects. In order to exhibit their knowledge in the subject they need to write well-structured essays or research papers. And this gets tough for some.
It has been observed that many students gain command in the subject they pursue, and acquire a great deal of knowledge and in-depth understanding about the course or the subject. Nevertheless, when it comes to expressing that knowledge in writing, they find themselves in hot water. Writing skill is something that does not come naturally, one has to learn that skill, some students are naturally gifted with the writing skill, then again, academic writing is an entirely different skill to learn.
For the students who are struggling to improve their academic writing, they need not to worry.
Good news for them!
There are many tips and tricks that they can try and implement to improve their academic writing and as a result massive improvement in their grades.
Table of Contents
1. Use of resources available online
There are many resources available online for the students that they can use to learn a great deal to sharpen their writing skills. The students should avail these resources to the best of their ability, because these online resources and tools for academic writing can be your best friend.
There are many writing services available online, such as wowessays which can be a substitute for a teacher or a mentor that can guide you through your academic writing journey whenever you need help.
There are some very interesting apps provided for free that can build a strong foundation for your writing, which points out your grammatical and spelling mistakes, errors such as, over use of prepositions and adverbs, use of complexed and long sentences, and writing in passive voice.
By using these resources appropriately, you can check that your writing is not too complicated or rather too simple, you can also get to know your level of writing as well.
2. Planning is imperative in academic writing
Academic writing is about conveying information and knowledge. You express your opinion, while constructing your argument in favour or against the opinion of another research.
So an academic essay carries a lot of information, so you need to plan and structure all this information by dividing them first in different parts; dividing into headings and subheadings. Make sure the structure of the essay is logical and systematic.
Once you do that, you need to plan what you will be writing in each part and that should be concise, simple and comprehensive. And keep a flow by writing progressively. From general to specific.
This will be your first draft that means you need to go through it again i.e., proofreading and editing. Your content should be coherent and in correct order and this can be done with a good planning and structuring of what you are going to impart on the paper.
3. Know your reader’s preference
This is the most significant part in your academic writing. In academic writing you are usually writing for your teacher or if it is a research paper then it is meant for the professional community.
So you know they are people with in depth knowledge of that specific subject you are writing about, so without spending your time on explaining things they already know, get to the point and deliver your ideas and thoughts you want them to know about.
4. Don’t forget to take the feedback
Feedback in academic writing is indispensable. Make sure that you get feedback before you submit your final copy. You can get the feedback from the online tools and resources available to help you with your language and to check that the structure of your content is correct and cohesive.
5. Read it out loud
One interesting technique to check the quality of your content is that you read it out loud. Because when you hear it, your mistakes will become obvious to you. You can identify the errors quickly such as where your sentences are complex or too long, your grammar mistakes, your text is sparsely punctuated etc.
Reading it aloud will also ensure that your essay is intelligible for others, if you find some difficulty reading your essay then guess what it will be harder for others to read the essay.
6. Write a lot
In order for your writing skills to be sharpened and polished, you need to read and write to a great extent. To hone any skill, one needs to put a great deal of time into practice. As we know practice makes perfect, and with practice you will gain experience.
The best way to improve your academic writing dramatically is to become an avid reader and write as much as you can. Reading gives you inspiration, ideas, enhances your critical thinking, equips you with a sense of structure, tone, language and with all the necessary elements that is required to write a great academic essay.
When you inculcate the habit of reading and writing on a daily basis, you will notice that expressing your thoughts in words and pouring them on paper has now become a breeze.
Bear in mind that the ultimate way to write competently and effectively is to learn what weakens your writing. After diagnosing the weakest links now set your mind to fix and prevent the glitches.
